


Happiness Is Haunted

by heuradys



Category: due South
Genre: Gen, M/M, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-02
Updated: 2004-10-02
Packaged: 2018-03-08 16:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3216647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heuradys/pseuds/heuradys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is a sequel to One Knight's Stand with a tinge from the The Sin-Eater and T & Empathy universe. I don't think you need to read the latter two to understand it, but certainly One Knight's Stand. Thanks to lynnmonster for beta, and sister_wolf and theamusedone for their feedback! Written for the 7 Deadly Sins dS flashfiction challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happiness Is Haunted

I know the struggle  
that happiness is haunted  
You don't get what you need  
You don't get what you wanted

-Headstones, Come On

 

After my mother's death, I stopped painting for several years.

Chicago changed that. Constable Fraser changed that. 

I ache, every day, with intense, bone-deep envy of him. I hide it; I'm remarkably good at hiding things. I could, I expect, wear my jealousy on my sleeve, and he'd simply believe it was over his relationship with Ray Kowalski, despite my small, conscious part in bringing them together on a cold November day not unlike this one. Or that, despite his disfavor with our superiors, his career--unlike my own--is actually thriving in Chicago; he actually gets to do police work instead of being a receptionist cum maid. I suspect he'd never guess the truth.

He never has, after all, admitted that he is indeed haunted by the ghost of his father. And I can't precisely ask him, either, how one summons a ghost. I just… watch them together, and listen, and wish… Oh, how I wish!

The adage runs, "Be careful what you wish for, or you just might get it." But, my wishes don't seem to ever come true, so wishing can't be the answer.

==

Even working under Inspector Thatcher, who, at times, reminds me of her -- I miss her. I still miss the woman she was before the accident, and, more shamefully, the little girl she was afterward. 

She needed me then, was proud of me. And, oh, I was ever so proud of myself, too. Not for becoming what she wanted me to be, but because who I was, the me who loved painting and flowers and… and was a clumsy, stupid youth, was enough for her for a time. 

When I was a young child, she was different. During the day, she was Judge Turnbull, but come evening she was mine and she told me stories, baked for me, taught me how to curl, and plastered the refrigerator with my foolish crayon drawings, finger-paintings, and my first watercolors, while my politician father philandered. (Him, I do not miss and really never have; he was so perpetually absent.) But, looking back, it is clear she loved him as he'd never truly loved her, and she instilled in me a hopeless romanticism. 

Their divorce, when I was eleven, changed my life. Suddenly I was expected to grow up, to leave my childish happiness behind. Nothing I did was good enough, my dreams of becoming an artist dashed at every turn by her expectation--nearly her demand--that I set my sights on becoming a Mountie, with the end goal of politics ever lurking in the background. (Any hopes I'd had of becoming a professional curler were stymied by own sheer clumsiness and desperate ineptitude at the game, but I still played when I could.) The works of my pens, brushes, and imagination were banished to hidden places in my closet, or they were torn, destroyed, thrown away. 

I'm not a social person; I cannot say that I've had many friends and I have never dated, per se. I don't have the skills. I try, sometimes with desperation, but there's so much socialization I missed while in my teens. I was fifteen when… when everything changed again, and my life became consumed with taking care of her. I don't blame her, of course; the accident wasn't her fault, nor was the illness that struck her when she was already down. She wasn't my mother then… not anymore. She was my child, or my friend. 

My art died when she did; I left it behind at the hospital. 

==

It was my first time away from Canada. The trip to Chicago--by bus--was exhausting and frustrating, although it had begun as an exciting, if frightening, adventure. The passengers nearest to me had no interest in conversation. A particularly odious child vomited on my boots. The bus broke down an hour outside of Detroit and stranded us for several hours. I could continue this litany of my disastrous journey, but I would much rather think about how it ended at the bus station in Chicago.

When I stepped off the bus, my defenses and body worn and ragged, I saw him standing there, with his wolf, and was immediately lost. Then he smiled--and I've never wanted to come back.

I'd never seen a man quite as beautiful as Constable Fraser; even amongst the ranks of Canadian law enforcement's finest, he is a nonpareil. If that alone wasn't enough to inspire both lust and envy in me, he was kind to me, as well. I am… unaccustomed to kindness. Bemused tolerance, yes, sometimes, once people get used to me, and thinly-veiled bewilderment before that, but not kindness. 

It was less than a week before I purchased a small set of watercolors.

My fingers itched to sketch him, to paint him… to touch him.

==

I envied him for his friendship with the first Ray Vecchio, but it was survivable. When Ray Kowalski became Ray Vecchio, the envy became bittersweet, because I could see in Constable Fraser the same longings that I shared. But his eccentricities--which are many and varied--have freed me. He became my idol because of--not in spite of--his feet of clay. For, if he can be a Mountie and himself, surely I could be as well. 

And then… I saw his father for the first time. 

I spent the night curled around my stuffed wolf, crying.

==

I spend the majority of my nights alone in the quiet of my apartment. It's a tiny place, so small and dim that Constable Fraser has compared it to a cardboard box--perhaps because of the original color of the walls--but it's my refuge, and he's never seen it by candlelight. Or since I started painting my dreams on the walls…

The closest I have to a friend right now is Michael--"Call me Mick, you friggin' doof"--the UPS driver, who provides service to the Consulate and lives in my building. We've watched hockey together a few times now, shared a couple of casual meals, and in spite of the way he teases me mercilessly about my art, my mannerisms, and my job, I have to believe he has some small affection for me--for my cooking, anyway. Perhaps one day I'll have the courage to ask him to sit for me; perhaps I'll have the courage to ask him for more than that.

And, perhaps, one day I'll wake to find my mother's ghost--rather than her portrait--smiling down at me.


End file.
